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Par Joël Pütz | Journaliste sportif
Never before has a WNBA player generated as much excitement as Caitlin Clark, who has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in recent months. According to one expert, she could take the women’s league into a new stratosphere.
Unfortunately, we won’t see her on the court for at least two weeks. Victim of a quadriceps injury, Caitlin Clark will have to let her teammates cope without her. This is very bad news, given that the point guard had started the season with a bang, ranking among the favorites for the MVP.
This is of course frustrating for Indiana, which relies heavily on her performance, but also for the WNBA more generally. The latter benefits enormously from Clark’s presence on the court, having burst onto the scene last year. Few women’s basketball players generate as much excitement and passion as the first pick in the 2024 draft.
Caitlin Clark’s colossal impact on WNBA finances
Ryan Brewer, a university specialist in the world of finance, made a completely crazy prediction concerning the impact of the young player:
If things just go as they were, and we have an expanded season of 22 home games with modest inflation, I’m looking at $875 million. And I could easily see that eclipsing a billion dollars on the economic impact of Caitlin Clark this year.
This may seem staggering, but it underscores the extent to which CC’s influence on the WNBA’s media coverage is significant. The WNBA has never enjoyed such a strong presence across all platforms and social media, and the numbers are bound to add up, as NBC News’ Andrew Greif recently revealed:
The WNBA, as a private company, does not disclose revenue figures, a league spokesperson said. Yet the league reported last year that its merchandise sales through Dick’s Sporting Goods had increased by 233% over the previous season. A spokesperson for Fanatics, the WNBA’s official e-commerce partner, said that Clark ranks in the top 20 of its top-selling athletes across all sports, and sixth among all basketball players, including the NBA.
The rising tide associated with Clark continued to lift other boats: All WNBA merchandise sold by Fanatics increased by more than 500% last season versus 2023, the spokesperson added. Clark’s effect shows few signs of abating in 2025. Earlier this month, 1.3 million viewers tuned in on ESPN to watch an Indiana preseason game played at Clark’s alma mater, Iowa — an audience that was bigger than all but two NBA preseason games on ESPN since 2010 (and both of those games included LeBron James), per Sports Business Journal.
